With a website that is highly indexed by the search engines it will be a lot cheaper and easier to constantly reach new prospects through your online marketing.

Moreover, SEO is not as complicated as many entrepreneurs think. In this article I give you the 10 most important basic rules to get started.

Before you read on, it is important that you understand what Google really wants. Once you realize that , it becomes easier to understand the SEO rules and apply them correctly.

1. A logical structure is the basis of SEO

The general layout of your website must first and foremost satisfy what people expect , ie . your logo at the top left, underneath your menu bar and at the bottom a footer with your sitemap and address details. It may be tempting to deviate from this standard, but chances are that people will get confused and look for a site that they ‘understand’ better. Your menu bar must immediately make clear what your website is about so let your keywords return to the menu items. You avoid better general words such as ‘services’, rather use keywords that immediately make clear what those services are. You notice it, keywords are important, they form the basis of your website and ensure that Google knows exactly what your pages are about. Some tips for using keywords:

make a list of the keywords that are important for your service or product

have your keywords come back in your menu bar

provide a separate page for each important keyword

use your keywords and synonyms in your texts

Process your keyword into titles and subtitles

write strong metadata per page

2. Mobile-friendliness is an absolute necessity

Mobile friendliness is one of the most important ranking factors to score well in the search results . If you know that more than 60% of the Belgian population uses mobile internet, it is surprising that so many sites are still not optimized for mobile devices. If your website is still not responsive, Google will no longer show you in search results on smartphones and tablets. Also on desktop, the mobile-friendliness of your site is taken into account,which means that you will be lower. Not sure if your website is well displayed on mobile devices?

3. Content is king

Valuable content remains the most important in 2018. Provide interesting information to which the visitor has something. Google sees how long a visitor stays on your website, whether he clicks through to other pages, how many pages he visits, etc. Based on that information, Google will decide whether or not your website is interesting to your visitors and that will affect your ranking. So make sure that you offer sufficient information and that your texts are long enough. Although Google does not talk about a minimum text length anywhere, I advise you to provide texts of at least 300 words in which you let your keywords come back 1 or 2 times per 100 words.For your visitors it is important that your lyrics screen kind are made. On a screen people will ‘scan’ texts, which means that they will quickly search for the paragraphs that are interesting to them instead of reading the full text. Take this into account in the layout of your text and help your visitors quickly find the right information .

4 Get your local SEO in order

Google my company Sign up at Google My Business , it strengthens your findability in Google, Google maps and Google+ . You can add images, opening hours and contact information here . Customers can submit reviews and reviews that make it easier to attract new customers. Recently you can even post updates so you can also announce an open house, shopping Sunday or promotion.

Check whether you are already logged in by entering the name of your company in the Google search bar . Usually you will see a frame appear on the right. If you have not registered yet, click on ‘Are you the owner of this company’ and follow the steps to claim your location.

5. Speed ​​is important

Also, the loading speed of your website is an important ranking factor . Visitors have less and less patience and do not want to wait until a website is charged, especially on mobile devices. Also for web shops , speed appears to be a decisive factor in the purchasing process, if the process goes too slowly, people get caught faster.

Google offers us an online tool to test the speed of your website , certainly check your website here. If the speed is too low, ask your website builder to see what the cause is and how this can be improved.

6. Video

Video is increasingly prominent online. Not so strange now that you can easily make and watch videos with almost every smartphone . YouTube offers an excellent platform to easily put online and is also the second largest search engine after Google . If you see opportunities to regularly make valuable videos, start your own YouTube channel and increase your find-ability in the search engines .

In addition, you can also share those videos on your website and on social media such as Facebook , there too video will greatly increase your reach.

7. Increase your online visibility

The greater your online visibility, the more interesting you become for Google and the social media will emerge there. Of course you can organize more traffic from social media to your website, but in addition, Google+ and twitter messages also end up in the search results , which benefits your organic traffic. The effect of Facebook on SEO is not confirmed by Google for the time being, but it is generally assumed that your popularity on Facebook contributes to a higher ranking.

8. Internal and external link building

Internal link building is nothing more than linking between your various web pages.There are various ways of creating external links such as Web Directory Links, Guest Posting, Fourm links and Blog Comments. Do this in a good way, you make it easier for the customer to navigate and he will spend more time on your site which is good for the search engines. In case you didn’t know, negative SEO services is what your competitors can do to harm your rankings. Thanks to internal link building, you put a spider web on your website, as it were, that connects all content with each other.

You hear very different opinions about external link building , some swear by it, others do very little. The best tactic is ultimately to grow organically. Do you regularly post interesting content on your website, do you have a good blog and put your social media in a professional way, then chances are that others will link to your content and that you will grow external links without really focusing on it .

If you want to actively engage in link building , there is one golden rule: make sure that your links are relevant. Where it used to be about the amount of links, it now mainly concerns qualitative links.It is therefore better to get 15 valuable links than 150 links that are not relevant.

9. Help the search engines with a sitemap .

An XML sitemap helps search engines index your website. You can compare it with the table of contents of a book, but only for Google , your visitors will not see this.

You can easily create the sitemap yourself and for free via this website .

If you have created a sitemap , you still have to submit it to Google. For that you go to Google Webmaster Tools . Log in with your Google account and click on ‘Add a site’. Then enter the url of your site and verify. Adding the XML sitemap is done in the Dashboard under ‘Submit asitemap ‘.

10. Choose https .

SSL is an encrypted connection between server and visitor and protects the data of your visitors and customers . You recognize the security behind the http in your url and the green lock that is usually shown just before your url . Search engines attach great importance to security and rightly so the SSL certificate is also a ranking factor . There are different grades for an SSL certificate where the validation of your domain is sufficient for most websites. At some hosting companies is that security meanwhile free, with others you have to pay a small annual amount. If you want to know more about the different possibilities.

I am a professional blogger/writer and have been writing as a freelance writer for various websites. Now I have joined one of the most recognized platforms in the world.

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6 Actionable On-Page SEO Tips To Boost Search Traffic

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